Average BMI in El Salvador
Men in El Salvador have an average BMI of 27.0, women 28.5. Both means fall in the WHO overweight band for men and overweight for women. That puts El Salvador 32nd of 186 countries in our data, ranked from highest BMI to lowest.
Key numbers
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Estimated share in each WHO category
Columns may not sum to 100 because of rounding. Real BMI distributions have a longer right tail than a normal curve, so the obese share here is probably a few points low.
El Salvador among its neighbours
What a given BMI means in El Salvador
Read it as: a man with BMI 30 in El Salvador has a higher BMI than 71% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in El Salvador is 5.5. About two thirds of men have a BMI between 21.5 and 32.5; for women the middle two thirds run from 22.3 to 34.7. Compared with the global mean, men here are 2.5 points higher and women 3.7 points higher.
BMI does not distinguish muscle from fat, and the WHO bands were set on European populations. For South and East Asian populations the same BMI carries more health risk, which is why several countries there use 23 and 27.5 as their own cut-offs.
Questions
- What is the average BMI in El Salvador?
- 27.0 for men and 28.5 for women, with standard deviations of 5.5 and 6.2. Averaged across the sexes that is 27.8, against a global figure of 24.6.
- What share of adults in El Salvador are overweight or obese?
- Our estimate from the mean and SD: 64% of men have a BMI of 25 or more, and 29% are at 30 or more. For women it is 71% and 40%. These assume a normal curve, so the true obesity shares are likely a few points higher.
- Is a BMI of 25 high in El Salvador?
- A BMI of 25 is the WHO line between healthy weight and overweight. In El Salvador it is higher than about 36% of men and 29% of women. So for men here it is below the middle of the pack.
- How does El Salvador compare with Georgia?
- Men in Georgia average 27.7 against 27.0 in El Salvador; women 27.9 against 28.5. Georgia ranks 31st, El Salvador 32nd.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. El Salvador is one of them, so the SD, the category shares and the percentiles above use the global spread rather than one measured here.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Lancet 2017, age-standardised mean BMI for 2016. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.
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Check your BMIAlso by country: Average height by country and Life expectancy by country.